through love, then we know for certain that _Nirvana_ is the
highest culmination of love. For love is an end unto itself.
Everything else raises the question "Why?" in our mind, and we
require a reason for it. But when we say, "I love," then there
is no room for the "why"; it is the final answer in itself.

Doubtless, even selfishness impels one to give away. But the
selfish man does it on compulsion. That is like plucking fruit
when it is unripe; you have to tear it from the tree and bruise
the branch. But when a man loves, giving becomes a matter of joy
to him, like the tree's surrender of the ripe fruit. All our
belongings assume a weight by the ceaseless gravitation of our
selfish desires; we cannot easily cast them away from us. They
seem to belong to our very nature, to stick to us as a second
skin, and we bleed as we detach them. But when we are possessed
by love, its force acts in the opposite direction. The things
that closely adhered to us lose their adhesion and weight, and we
find that they are not of us. Far from being a loss to give them
away, we find in that the fulfilment of our being.

Thus we find in perfect love the freedom of our self. That only
which is done for love is done freely, however much pain it may
cause. Therefore working for love is freedom in action. This is
the meaning of the teaching of disinterested work in the _Gita_.

The _Gita_ says action we must have, for only in action do we
manifest our nature. But this manifestation is not perfect so
long as our action is not free. In fact, our nature is obscured
by work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother
reveals herself in the service of her children, so our true